MENTAL by the vacuum cleaner, Contact Theatre, Manchester (May 7th/May 8th)

May 8^th 2015. It’s the day after the election and like many, I am utterly shocked (and in denial) about the result. How to make sense of it? Mental, an autobiographical monologue by artist and activist the vacuum cleaner (James Leadbitter) told with the aid of his psychiatric notes and a police file on him proves the perfect antidote to post-election blues.

From the beginning, Mental feels clandestine and therefore magnetic. Near the railway arches between Deansgate and Oxford Road Station, in the incessant, torrential clichéd Manchester rain, I’m met by a girl in a purple Contact Theatre jumper. ‘Are you here for Mental? Can you see the man with a green hoodie on? Cross-over and he’ll lead you to the vacuum cleaner.’ I mistrust her sweetness and slightness, but I’m compelled to follow her instructions.

The young, hooded male leads me up some stairs, away from the downpours to a residential, unassuming block. The audience comprising twelve of us are taken up in the lifts. We are led into a flat and offered carrot cake.  I decline.

In the living room we sit on cushions and stare nervously at the centre-piece, a double mattress. A mournful, male disembodied voice with a Lancashire brogue gives himself a pep-talk ‘You can do this. You have to do this. They’ve paid for tickets. I can’t do this. I can’t do this.’ And suddenly, a few minutes in, Leadbitter surfaces from under the duvet, unexpectedly, confronting us with a shy gaze while a record player blasts the soulful Wake Up Everybody by Harold Melvin & The Bluenotes. 

Leadbitter mourns the election result and asks us if we’re ok. The atmosphere is already painfully familiar without this intimating rhetorical question.  His direct method draws us in, and he proceeds to tell his us his story creating a relaxed atmosphere by the lo-fi accompaniments of record player, overhead projector, lamp and FUCK OFF mug (a desecrated Starbucks logo), which entertainingly forms part of his story.

Doing away with acts or breaks, Leadbitter structures his piece with the aid of his overhead projector, 1999-2003, 2003-2009, 2009-present. This overall structure seems to be more in line with the episodic nature of silent film, the novel-like style of The Royal Tenenbaums or the wonderfully slapdash approach of American Splendor, weaving jazz, comic, film and theatre together in a decidedly post-modern piece.

In a tattered, navy turtle-neck dress, Leadbitter beguiles us with his stranger than fiction tale. Appropriating the language of the state (psychiatric and police) on him, makes him reclaim his own story. Leadbitter’s gentle persona makes you forget that the story that he is telling us is quite potent in its scandal. His dead-pan, comic and at times blunt delivery softens the shock of the brutality of the state – whether mediated by psychiatry or by the police.

The two strands of his story are woven intricately (and one could say interchangeably?) – one is his history of mental illness, the other his history of activism. On the one hand he is labelled with ‘borderline personality disorder’ by psychiatrists, and by the police as a ‘domestic extremist’. These labels smack of the Orwellian nightmare, and reflect the language used by politicians post 9/11. One could levy these labels at the present elected party in the UK is my immediate, recurring thought during the performance.  

His cartoonish escapades (the lawsuit Starbucks made against him, protesting against Eon, getting dressed up as a clown as a group of activists) could descend into bathos, were it not for the darker, truly shocking accounts of police brutality he weaves into his story. In 2009, he was protesting peacefully in London, and on that fateful day, Ian Tomlinson was beaten by a police officer whose brutal blows contributed to his death. Leadbitter visibly shakes as he tells us about being kettled by the police, unable to leave the scene of police criminality.

Alternating violence with humour, Leadbitter pulls out a Borderline Personality Disorder for Dummies guide returning us to a more light-hearted place. The relief is only temporary as the almost forgotten carrot cake ends up being a tragic part of his story – the last meal he wanted before attempting (almost successfully) to kill himself. This denouement is raw and deeply felt by the audience – part sick joke, part genius, part indigestion and part immense sadness.

The only slightly troublesome note arrives when Leadbitter breaks to ask for a hug from a member of staff. This criticism could seem utterly heartless, but despite the clear pain in his story, the request for the hug seems gratuitous or as if it’s part of the performance itself, and therefore slightly contrived.

Leadbitter’s great strength is that the pain doesn’t stay just pain. It is mediated into Art. With the backdrop of another  disco treat Love is the Message,  Leadbitter tells us  about Ship of Fools, an irreverent and inventive take on his own pain, an artwork where he sectioned himself in his own flat, for 28 days as an imitation of a Section 2 under the Mental Health Act 1983. He invited artists and friends to spend time with him, and was able to convince doctors not to section him. In parodying the psychiatric system of containment for his own purposes, he is able to both make an important comment on and take back his personal freedom. His perspicacity in not just surviving pain but making it indivisible from his process as artist astounds. 

The act of mere existence, of difference is affront to the establishment. In some very small, but not negligible way, the very act of being here, listening to his story, feels like protest. Mental couldn’t feel more relevant as Art and protest in these Citizen Four times. In telling us his story in a particular way, he is able to remind us that the personal is the political. 

Despite the myriad revelations, the end result doesn’t feel like an over-wraught confessional. Leadbitter’s piece defies straightforward labels. Part documentary, part DJ, art performance, testimonial. He is a technicolour Charlie Chaplin, regaling us with his ludicrous (but strangely true) Hannah Barbera misadventures that are peppered with huge amounts of personal pain but somehow don’t feel too burdensome. 

As I walk away from the performance, going to meet my sister for post-election drowning of sorrows, I pass the homeless protesters camping out in tents outside Central Library. The landscape feels alien; like the worst dystopia you could imagine, except it isn’t. It’s real. Leadbitter’s activism, protest, art and life feel more relevant than ever.

By Eli Regan